Lee Road old-timer needs TLC, but should more than repay your €550k investment 

THE chance to live in a 120-year old Cork period home, within a walk on the flat to the city centre, with a nifty garage on the road outside for a small car or for bikes, also close to UCC and the Lee Fields, with a south-facing aspect and River Lee views - yes, the whole kit and caboodle sums up Glenbeigh, a new arrival to the end-of-year market.

Set just west of Thomas Davis Bridge, this two-storey, double fronted home of character and much internal architectural originality is set between its two shouldering neighbours, each of them slightly taller, three storeys in height, with distinctive demi-lune window on their attic levels.

It is sort of the ‘middle child’ between its loftier siblings, but what it lacks in height, it makes up for in girth, or width. By way of compensation, its selling agent Michael McKenna is of the opinion that“two storeys is much preferred by families than three”.

Glenbeigh itself is a robust 1,800 sq ft four-bedroom mid-terraced home, still sort of four-square, with rooms left and right off a central hall and landing, getting a handy three ground floor reception rooms plus a kitchen in one of the other corners downstairs, and with four beds above, one per corner, with two bathroom in a rear annex.

Internally it has much originality, from the hall tiles to wall paneling, lovely, slightly curved staircase, stained glass double doors in a rich green between rooms on the left, mostly original fireplaces, picture rails, corniced ceilings, internal doors and architraves, wood floors etc.

Outside, it has a terracotta tiling feature up in an apex front gable, similar to its beefier book-ending sibling either side, and has a slight window bay to the left of the central front door.

It gets an E2 BER, and given it has so many fireplaces, it could have been worse.

 It has central heating and some rewiring; windows have been replaced in the past decade or two with double glazed white PVC: some of them tilt and turn and are a reasonable match and profile to the neighbours and to the style of an elegant pair of semi-ds just on the western side.

One of that semi-detached duo, Athdara, has featured in these pages in recent years and sold last year for a young family making a move to Dublin after doing sensitive upgrade works. Athdara made €759,000 in 2023, having sold before that in 2018 for €490,000.

Moving towards a sale on the city side, meanwhile is the c 2,500 sq ft Janeville Lodge, a detached architect-designed Dutch dormer home, likely to be making close to its revised price of €845,000, and an elderly 1900s semi, Carrigbeg, is also selling for over €600,000.

Whoever buys Glenbeigh will be taking on work, but it’s on a scale of modernising and (if there is such a thing?) heavy duty decorating.

Each of the bedrooms has a sink, and the rear return with its two bathrooms also leads out to the tiered rear garden, described as having ”a cascade of greenery,” by Mr McKenna. The lower level has a courtyard and a small polycarbonate greenhouse/shed.

The area around here is undergoing generational change, with the Land Development Agency advancing on 260 mixed tenure new homes at the former St Kevin’s hospital under Shanakiel.

Depending on who buys here and what they pay for it, over or under its €550k AMV, it may not end up a total budget breaker for the location, especially if they are in any way handy or ‘connected’ to trades?

VERDICT: Happily here for over 100 years, Glenbeigh still has Lee views. Might some look to ‘level up,’ and convert at attic level?